Window on Eurasia -- New Series

Wednesday, February 21, 2018

Staunton, February 21 – Approximately
200,000 Russians move from rural areas to urban ones every year, but today “the
majority of those working age people who remain do not work in agriculture” but
in the budget sector, according to a new study by Nikita Mkrtchyan and Tatyana
Nefedova of the Higher School of Economics (publications.hse.ru/articles/211425956).

The popular image of rural to urban
migration is that it is the result of young people fleeing from the farm to the
bright lights of the big cities, the two geographers say; but the modernization
of agriculture from labor-intensive to capital-intensive forms also plays a key
role.

In many areas, young workers are no
longer needed in the number that were only a decade or so ago; and so rural
residents are forced to find other jobs in their home areas or, when they can’t,
to move to the cities, often with the greatest reluctance as shown by the numbers
of “backtrailers” who either maintain rural homes or retire to their home
villages.

“Every year,” Mkrtchyan and Nefedova
says, “between 90,000 and 174,000 villagers move into the urban settlements of
their regions,” with the villages declining by between 31,000 and 76,000 people
as a result. (The difference reflections immigration and returns, the two
scholars point out.)

Official data suggest that
immigration compensates for about a third of the rural to urban flight, “but in
reality, there are significantly fewer such migrants in the villages: having
gotten their registration there, they live and work in cities.” And so they do
not in fact compensate for rural flight.

People aged 18 or so are the most
likely to leave the villages: they do not yet have jobs or families and so feel
freer to move, the two geographers say.This has been true since the 1950s, and it means that rural areas lose young
people who have just completed their educations and the population as a whole
becomes older.

Indeed, if one considers migration
flows by age cohort, they say, out-migration from rural areas is much higher
than in-migration among those under 40, but then the situation reverses itself
with in-migration becoming higher than outmigration for each older group. At
present, about 800,000 in official figures and many more in unofficial ones are
returning to villages.

At present, they conclude, “the
majority of labor-capable rural residents do not work in agriculture.” In most
places, fewer than one in four or only 4.9 million out of 21 million do so. Far
higher shares work in budgetary spheres, in some cases as high as 70 or 80 percent.
These trends, the two say, are likely to continue.

Staunton, February 21 – Anatoly
Rudy, deputy head of Russia’s prison system, says the number of followers of “aggressive
trends of Islam” is growing rapidly because of the activities of 29,000 Uzbeks,
Tajiks and Kyrgyz now behind bars in Russia.The situation is so dire that he has appealed to Muslim Spiritual Directorates
(MSDs) in those countries for assistance.

In the past, Russian penal officials
have placed the blame for this problem on Muslims from the North Caucasus who
have been sentenced for “extremism” and who some jailors would like to see
segregated out from the general prison population.Rudy’s remark is intriguing because it links
extremism to gastarbeiters (lenta.ru/news/2018/02/16/islam/).

“In one colony,”
Rudy says, “where half of the condemned consist of people from the republics of
Central Asia, disorders have occurred. The religious community has entered into
conflict with ‘the common jail subculture’ and as a result, force had to be
used to address” this challenge to the order of the prison.

“We have fascists and nationalists
and we know how to work with them,” the prison official said. “But with people
who profess aggressive forms of Islam, we do not know what to do.” If Muslim
officials from these countries or from Russia can help, that would be extremely
welcome, Rudy concluded.

The penal official’s comments will
undoubtedly help to power a new upsurge in anti-Central Asian attitudes among
Russians.

Staunton, February 23 – When Germany
went haywire under Hitler, Ayder Muzhdabayev says, “Germanophobia didn’t
surprise anyone and everyone understood its usefulness and its basis.”And that political Germanophobia disappeared
overnight when Hitler was defeated and the Germans committed themselves that
such outrages would never happen again.

Today, the Crimean Tatar journalist
argues,“political Russophobia” is equally justified and equally needed by both
the Russian people themselves and by the international community and that it
will also disappear overnight once Russians recognize the source of their
problems and commit to change (nv.ua/opinion/muzhdabaev/chem-polezna-rusofobija--2453181.html).

In an article in Kyiv’s
Novoye vremya, Muzhdabayev argues that the world “must become consistently
Russophobic, in everything from economics to sports,” something justified by
Russian attitudes and Russian actions rather than by any specific hatred to
ethnic Russians as such, despite what many of them believe.

No one ‘fears Russians’ or ‘doesn’t
like Russians’” just because they are Russians, a sharp contrast to the
attitudes of anti-Semites toward Jews.And no one “doesn’t like Russians’ as specific personalities and
individuals. If an ethnic Russian behaves, no one will ever say a bad word abut
him.These are objective facts.”

What political Russophobia is about,
the journalist continues, is a horror about the specific actions of the Russian
state and the Russian world – “wars, murders, illegality, the destruction of
the histories and cultures of others, moral terror, and in fact the racist
hatred of part of Russian society to other people, countries and peoples,” to
name just a few.

Just as Germanophobia was useful in
opposing Hitler and disappeared when he was defeated and Germans committed to
change, so too “Russophobia is useful and justified in our time. Russophobia is
not ethnic and not anti-human; it does not touch specific innocent peoples or
their human rights. Russophobia is political.”

It reflects, Muzhdabayev says, the
real concerns many have about “the threats which Russian society in its
overwhelming majority albeit in the interests of others and its ‘own’ outcasts
has generated on its own. There are no other guilty parties.”Until these causes are removed, “Russophobia
in the world will only grow.”

Indeed, he argues, “political
Russophobia as a conscious strategy of the civilized world in relation to ‘the
Russian world’ – on all fronts – is not only an inevitable but also vitally
necessary option.”And “not to be a
political Russophobe now means not to recognize reality and not to assess
objectively the extent of the threat.”

“The world must become consistently
Russophobic in all sectors, from economics to sports,” Muzhdabayev says. If it
doesn’t, “the fascistic majority of Russian society will never recognize” that
it is hated not because of who it is but because of what its leaders do and
will not see any reason to change.

Perhaps even more important, the
writer concludes, “Russophobia is the only path of salvation not only for the
entire world from Russia but of the Russians themselves from the chauvinist
paranoia” which now infects their society so dangerously.